Atari STE Blitter objects demo (new record)

[Anima]

After the video post on Facebook I just wanted to start another thread about the Atari (STE) Blitter here.

This demo is showing 23 32 x 32 pixels Blitter objects moving at 50 Hz on a genuine Atari STE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UotlGkgesbU

"New attempt with one more object: now displaying 23 moving Bobs (32 x 32 pixels, 4 planes) at 50 Hz (320 x 200 resolution) running on an Atari STE. Fun fact: we're reaching and surpassing the theoretically Amiga OCS Blitter speed limit (screen size: 320 x 200 pixels with 4 bitplanes)."

Will post some strange/interesting observations later on...

[BlankVector]

Great suff Blitter rulez. Too bad that it hadn't been used much on STe back in the time.

[theimann]

Hi Anima, is the original video post accessible without signing in to FB?
If so, can you provide a link?
I feel like I'm missing out on Atari stuff going on by not having a FB account anymore, I just kept ignoring content that was published on FB...

[theimann]

Plus:

- Congrats!
- Thanks for making this more accessible than just a FB post

[Anima]

Hi Anima, is the original video post accessible without signing in to FB?

The discussion on FB is in a private group so I doubt that you have access without logging in and joining. The video, though, is the same as in the original post.

[keops]

Great stuff, you should make a small release / demo using it. But then people will have access to the precious code and secrets

I never check other people's code because I find it really time consuming to try to understand code that's not mine and I have way more fun trying to devise weird stuff from scratch but in that case I might have a look to learn how the Blitter works, precisely because viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38994_

[Cyprian]

After the video post on Facebook I just wanted to start another thread about the Atari (STE) Blitter here.

This demo is showing 23 32 x 32 pixels Blitter objects moving at 50 Hz on a genuine Atari STE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UotlGkgesbU

"New attempt with one more object: now displaying 23 moving Bobs (32 x 32 pixels, 4 planes) at 50 Hz (320 x 200 resolution) running on an Atari STE. Fun fact: we're reaching and surpassing the theoretically Amiga OCS Blitter speed limit (screen size: 320 x 200 pixels with 4 bitplanes)."

well done Anima

Will post some strange/interesting observations later on...

waiting impatiently

[dml]

I only noticed this thread a few days ago (and don't have facebook), although I did see the YT vid when it went up.

Anyway, it's pretty amazing! Are there any cycles left to play with there? Can't wait to see what happens next.

[Anima]

Thanks all.
I am currently waiting for my new PSU for the Atari STE due to some strange glitches while watching this demo. The glitches are visible within an one hour time frame after "cold starting" the machine.

[Anima]

So finally I've got hold of the new PSU and in fact I have to say that it improved the system stability. Now, fortunately, with the new PSU everything looks fine.

Here are two video recordings before and after the PSU replacement:
Before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcjYgbB ... e=youtu.be
and after: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_ViiKT ... e=youtu.be

So finally I can do further optimizations on this.

Edit: btw: thanks to Centuriontech for the easy "plug and play" PSU.

[dml]

That looks sooo strange o__O

Must have been driving you crazy for a while. Glad you got it fixed!

[Anima]

That looks sooo strange o__O

Must have been driving you crazy for a while. Glad you got it fixed!

Thanks. Yes, it was a real let down on the achievement. It felt like a "speed record that wasn't".

Interestingly everything else like demos, games and programs ran fine on my machine and also the original PSU looks ok.

Anyway, it seems that replacing the PSU is highly recommended for everyone. However, I have to check tomorrow again that it'll still shows no glitches.

[agranlund]

"New attempt with one more object: now displaying 23 moving Bobs (32 x 32 pixels, 4 planes) at 50 Hz (320 x 200 resolution) running on an Atari STE. Fun fact: we're reaching and surpassing the theoretically Amiga OCS Blitter speed limit (screen size: 320 x 200 pixels with 4 bitplanes)."

This is madness
Well done sir!

[Anima]

This is madness
Well done sir!

[Anima]

Here's the binary for the demo. Works fine on Hatari and Steem emulators also. Please check if you have graphics issues on a genuine machine which is most likely cause by the old caps in your PSU.

[dml]

Cool

By sheer coincidence I finally set up the STE+CRT so I can give it a try sometime today.

[Anima]

By sheer coincidence I finally set up the STE+CRT so I can give it a try sometime today.

Unfortunately my floppy killed my boot disk yesterday. So now I have to wait for a replacement Gotek device...

[dml]

Unlucky

I'm still using the USB version of HxC. So I can just leave it connected to the PC all the time and mount directories from it without moving any SD cards or memory sticks.

Unfortunately the software for injecting directories from the host still has some inertia - GUI based, and it always defaults to a non-Atari disk format requiring a dropdown menu every time. Also the inject-directory feature is missing from all the more recent versions of the software (pity - its the most useful thing about it for cross-dev!).

There's a way to something similar from a script where it bakes an image file first then mounts the image but I'll need to read the docs again to see what the least-inertia build-to-boot solution is for this thing. For now I'll just suffer a bit longer while I finish with current experiments...

[Dal]

Nice work - just ran it in Hatari. Music is great too!

[dml]

I haven't had much luck mounting this file on HxC - the Atari doesn't like any formats > 720k DS/DD. I can get a directory ok but then read errors loading the image.

It may be possible to get it to work but it would probably involve making a custom disk format with the right hardware emulation settings.

So you can mount large images on the Gotek without any software on the Atari side? Or do you run a driver on the Atari for extended disk formats?

[Anima]

Yeah, it still seems to be complicated getting a convenient solution just for transferring data from (or mainly to) the Atari ST without trouble.

I recently "moved" my Atari cross development to a Raspberry Pi 3. With Theia you can develop even with your tablet and I am using the serial interface for transferring data from a shared folder (ST Serial Disk). Transfer is slow, though, but I don't need any cables because I have access to the shared folder over Wifi (using Samba).

I will extend the features (like adding gcc) and also add some sample sources later on. This SD card image could be of interest for other developers as well.

[Anima]

Nice work - just ran it in Hatari. Music is great too!

Thanks. It's a simple sample loop from a website just to demonstate that there's time left for other things.

I have a friendly request: maybe the feature of editing the original post will come back again!?

[dml]

That looks interesting. I have a spare PI here with nothing special on it.

I had been using PARCP a lot on the Falcon which is fine for transferring big stuff but was stuck with 720K floppy transfer on the ST/STE (at least, for a TOS1.62 / no-auto-driver solution on the Atari side).

[Anima]

So you can mount large images on the Gotek without any software on the Atari side? Or do you run a driver on the Atari for extended disk formats?

TBH, I don't have any experience with Gotek drives. I will just use it to boot from the internal harddisk since TOS 1.06 refuses to do so.

I only need to start a small program to map drive M to a shared (ST Serial Disk) folder, that's all.

[dml]

Here's the binary for the demo. Works fine on Hatari and Steem emulators also. Please check if you have graphics issues on a genuine machine which is most likely cause by the old caps in your PSU.

Hehehe I see what you did there

Very impressive bit of work - well done!